[From, IIRC, the Gilligan’s Island preamble.]
The latest from Erick Erickson’s email barrage of non-subscribers to his newsletter:
Let’s set aside the NBC News poll that shows Biden up 14 points. Instead, look at the polling average. It has Biden up 8 points. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.1% and the polling average was Clinton head by 3.2%.
In 2016, there were multiple well funded third party challengers as well and Trump ultimately only won by 70,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If Biden is really ahead by 6 points, he has a lead that will be reflected within the Electoral College.
This is why, if you know where to look, panic is starting to set in with Republicans. The public polling now is reflecting internal Republican polling from last week. Multiple campaign strategists and pollsters from states as diverse as Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and even South Carolina are starting to see the bottom falling out.
Senior citizens, suburban women, and white men from up north are drifting to Biden.
Wait, what? ... and white men from up north are drifting to Biden.
It took a moment – or two – to remember that Erickson’s located in Georgia. That must mean that, uh, I suppose in Erickson’s parlance Us Northern White Men, a remark I find mildly annoying, are abandoning the President.
And I suppose there’s some value to partitioning the voters for analysis. However, the way Erickson is using it, it feels faintly as if a Great Traitorhood to Trump is being formed up here. Which makes me grumpy.
Because, to be honest, I have been continually dismayed that white men are more or less supporting Trump in the same proportions – something like 56%, although I don’t have a recent number, or link, handy – as they did in 2016. Most other groups that supported Trump in substantial numbers in 2016 have reversed course, such as the suburban white women who have gotten much of the credit for Democratic resurgence in the 2018 midterms. They’ve recognized their error, whether it was Trump support or just Clinton non-support, and are trying to make up for it.
But the white guys? Not much movement, last I saw. But perhaps that’s finally changing. I’d been thinking of calling for a Lysistrata maneuver, which my five readers would no doubt laugh at it. But maybe that won’t be necessary.
Maybe the dysfunctional Republican Party can be burned to the ground this election cycle, and replaced with something more moderate, and operationally less insane. But it would help – me with my sanity – if Erickson could acknowledge the madness that has infected the Republican Party, and how it is much, much worse than the general Democrat inclination to let women decide on their own morality vis a vis abortion, rather than inflict a religious neurosis upon them.
